


Paying a Debt

by kaffyrutsky



Category: Doctor Who, Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: Donna Noble Fix-It, F/M, Gen, Love, Marriage, Redemption
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-31
Updated: 2019-10-31
Packaged: 2021-01-17 05:03:57
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 9,944
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21261029
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaffyrutsky/pseuds/kaffyrutsky
Summary: Nightmares, headaches, and the fear of being alone. It had been a hard year for Donna Noble-Temple. Shaun Temple was determined to find an answer; if it meant hunting down the Doctor, so be it.
Relationships: Donna Noble/Shaun Temple
Comments: 22
Kudos: 89





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Years ago, I wrote a fixit for Donna Noble, who never deserved the fate the Tenth Doctor inflicted on her. That effort turned out rather dark. When the Thirteenth Doctor appeared, I knew she would be the first iteration of the Doctor able to revisit Donna and, perhaps, help her. This story is, however, as much about Shaun Temple as it is about the Thirteenth Doctor. I hope it pleases.  
** Edited by:** my incomparable Best Beloved, with help from the delightful **phoenixdragon**  
**Disclaimer:** As much as I wish it were otherwise, no Whoniverse characters are mine. They are the sole properties of the BBC and their respective creators. I intend no copyright infringement, and take no coin. I do, however, love them all, and thank the BBC for letting me play (and create the occasional original character) in their sandbox.

Shaun touched Donna’s shoulder gingerly, caught between wanting to wake her and letting her slumber. She slept so badly these days … he took a breath and shook the shoulder, this time a little harder.

“Donna.”

His wife turned over to face him, her eyes large, the shadows beneath them bruised blue. “Shaun?”

“Love, I’m off to work.”

Donna struggled to sit up. “What time is it?”

“Half eight. There’s a staff meeting, and they want us all there.”

“Bloody bureaucrats,” she grumbled, swinging her legs over the side of the bed, and reaching for her robe. It sounded perfunctory, a pale echo of the fire she used to breathe in and out as naturally as air. 

He waited for it.

“How long will you be gone?” 

“I don’t think the meeting’s going to take too long, but I promised Gerald I’d finish that systems check before Friday.” He spoke evenly, casually, but looked past her shoulder as he said it. “Figure I’ll be back by three.”

She didn’t bother to hide her relief. “Oh, that’s different, then; that’s good.” She’d missed the fact he hadn’t looked her in the eye. She never would have missed it in the old days. But in the old days, she’d never been afraid of being alone. 

Shaun didn’t mind being with her most of the day; he loved her. What’s more, he liked her — liked her laugh, her sense of humor, her efficiency in everything she turned her hand to, the brash attacks she made on every obstacle in life, the gusto with which she grabbed at life. Being with her was one of the joys of his life. It had been that way from his first amazed realization that she liked him, through their days scraping by as a newly minted couple and on through the heady post-lottery days.

But that Donna, the one who loved being with people and having a good time, the one who supported him at every turn while he learned his own worth, was disappearing. 

She’d been replaced by someone who was afraid of being alone — something that might look like the same thing to someone who didn’t love Donna, but which was very different from her delight in people. This Donna slept badly, clung to him as if he as a life-raft, stared out the window at nothing in particular for hours on end. 

Talking to her about it did no good. She’d get tearfully angry, telling him she was just fine, really fine, thank you, what are you on about. Like as not, she’d then come down with one of the punishing headaches that turned her ruddy complexion as pale as paper. 

Sometimes she would walk away from him without saying anything, and leave the house to go walking, sometimes for hours. Those walks had become almost the only time she’d leave the house.

So Shaun had talked to her mother about it. 

Initially Sylvia had waved him off.

_ There’s nothing wrong with Donna.  _

_ She’s just looking for attention.  _

_ Why d’you keep on asking me?  _

_ I’m just frustrated. I’m sorry, Shaun. I know she’s in, well, pretty bad shape.  _

_ Look, if you love her, just … keep on loving her. She’ll get better. I think so, anyway. I mean, I hope she’ll get better. _

_ It’s complicated.  _

_ I don’t know — just complicated.  _

_ You wouldn’t believe me if I told you. _

But eventually his quiet perseverance and her daughter’s declining emotional health broke down her determination to avoid the subject. That’s when he’d learned about the Doctor. 

_ What the hell? This guy’s a genius alien, yeah? So why can’t he fix Donna? _

Sylvia had had no answer. Maybe her dad might have had one, she had said, looking uncharacteristically lost herself. 

Her father, Donna’s beloved Gramps, had died a year and a half after the wedding. Shaun had held Donna while she cried herself out on his shoulder, and he’d shed a few tears himself, because he’d been learning to love the old man who had so eagerly accepted him.

He knew me so well, and he didn’t care how stupid I am, Donna had wept. Shaun had shaken her, very gently, and whispered that Gramps knew Donna was one of the smartest people he knew. Donna hadn’t answered, but she had relaxed into him, her tears gradually slowing.

Shaun and Sylvia forged a closer relationship after the revelation about the Doctor. Shaun, who took to visiting Sylvia once a week or so, just to be able to talk about his beloved redhead’s health, quickly realized how worried his mother-in-law was; her normal stroppy behavior masked a very real fear that Donna was starting to remember what the Timelord had blocked off and declared fatal to his former companion. 

“I haven’t the slightest idea of where to find him, how to get a message to him,” she said, over tea and some of the cinnamon biscuits she occasionally took time to make. “What on earth are we supposed to do if she starts really remembering? Right now, it’s bad dreams and being afraid to be alone, but what if it gets worse?”

Shaun couldn’t answer, but he knew Sylvia didn’t expect him to. He took another biscuit, and then a deep breath. “I ran across something online the other day.” 

Sylvia looked up from the tea she’d been staring into. “What?”

“There’s a detective agency —” Shaun began. 

“What, you think detectives can find an alien?” Sylvia’s expression was as richly dismissive as her words, but Shaun was used to her ways now, and he just started over. “There’s a detective agency, name of Jones and Smith. They advertise themselves as the most thorough investigators on Earth, or off it.” 

“Well that’s just advert guff, isn’t it.” She didn’t even make it a question.

Shaun reached for the tablet he’d brought with him from the car. He found the website, and read from its “About Us” tab. “Jones and Smith, established in 2008, are proud of our ability to research even the most difficult of cases, and discover ways to solve our clients’ problems. When those problems involve issues that are out of the ordinary — especially those linked to Britain’s expanding status as an off-world event nexus — Jones and Smith have had unparalleled success in problem solving.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Now Sylvia was really paying attention. 

“What I  _ think _ it means,” Shaun said, “is that this firm isn’t trying to pretend things like the Daleks and the … the Master … didn’t happen.” He usually avoided talking about that alien; what he’d done still shook both of them. But today he was trying to make a point. “They’re not doing what the government does, covering up and rationalizing and all. There’s got to be a good reason for this firm’s claims being so bald. I think they really deal with some of the off-world things we’ve survived.”

“Like … you think these people can find the Doctor?” 

“Dunno, not for certain, but I’ve got an appointment with them, day after tomorrow,” he said, finishing off the last of the biscuits. “It can’t hurt to try.”

“You’re not going to tell—”

“No, of course not,” Shaun said with a flash of irritation. Both of them knew better than to talk to Donna about her condition when she was this deep into depression and sleep deprivation. “I’ve got work that morning, and I’ll just tell her I’ve got an early afternoon meeting.”

*** *** *** ***

Martha Jones leaned back in her chair, and looked Shaun Temple over with an almost medical thoroughness. Shaun stayed silent. He’d let her respond to what he’d just said. 

“You’re looking for the Doctor.”

“I am. For my wife. For Donna.”

“We know about Donna,” she said softly. “We’ve kept her file open for the past 10 years.”

Shaun stared at her. They knew about Donna? They  _ knew? _

As if she could read his mind, Jones said, “I can’t help her. I would if I could; I’m a doctor. But I’m not  _ the _ Doctor. We’ve been able to ensure that she gets the best medical care possible; she’s had access to medications that have helped keep her memory blocks intact without dulling her conscious mind.”

Shaun thought about the doctors Donna had visited, the medications that had — until recently — kept her healthy, but which didn’t seem to be in the NHS formularies. “How?”

“Torchwood,” Mickey Smith said, from across the room, where he sat half encircled by a bank of screens and keyboards. He didn’t elaborate. Shaun turned to Jones, who sighed. “It’s an organization that kept an eye on the skies.”

“Like UNIT?”

“You’ve been doing your homework,” Smith said approvingly. “Then again, you wouldn’t have gotten along as famously at Chadwell Analytics if you didn’t have a head for that kind of work. Yeah, like them, except without the ethics. But forget about Torchwood; they’re gone now. We’ve kept the patents on some of their less dangerous pharmaceutical finds alive, and we made sure Donna’s doctors knew about them and prescribed them.”

“But they’re starting to lose their efficacy,” Jones said, standing up and going to a window in the small office. “We’ve been worried, but haven’t been able to do much about it.”

Shaun looked around. The whole space screamed Secret Organization to him — but it also muttered Shoestring Operation With Dodgy Funding. He wasn’t surprised by Jones’ statement. “Where does that leave Donna?”

“There’s a network of those of us who knew some version of the Doctor,” Jones said. “Mick and I don’t keep up with him anymore; too much history, and we’ve got too much to do down here, especially when he doesn’t bother to turn up for the smaller incursions. But there’s at least one person I know that you might want to contact.”

“Oh, you should definitely contact her,” Smith said, getting up and joining Jones at the window, and turning to her with his next words. “Last I knew she was in Brazil; back at that place she and Cliff operate. But knowing her, she could be halfway round the world from there by now, on some cocamamie mission, so that’s a consideration.”

“Tom said he talked to Jo about three weeks ago, and she said she’d settled in for the season,” Jones said. As she said the first name, she touched Smith’s hand; Shaun saw the man’s momentary stiffness disappear into a smile. 

“Then she’s the one to check with,” he said. “She doesn’t usually like tech, but Sarah Jane left her everything in the attic, even Mr. Smith, and Cliff’s a dab hand with things like that these days. So yeah, maybe. If she’s in the mood. If  _ he’s _ in the mood.” 

Smith frowned slightly as he spoke. Shaun wondered why. The man seemed like someone Shaun might want to know, but he didn’t seem happy talking about the Doctor, or how he himself might be connected to the alien.

The Timelord … Shaun didn’t know whether to laugh at the title — it sounded like something a 14-year-old anime otaku might call themselves — or be terrified by it. The latter seemed more realistic, given what little he’d learned from Sylvia. 

“For something like this? She’ll be in the mood. And she’ll convince him. You’ve seen her in action,” Jones said, interrupting Shaun’s internal monologue as she glowered just a bit at her partner. 

Smith grimaced, then smiled again. “Yeah, you’re right. Sorry to be such a prat.”

Jones grinned at him to accept the apology, then turned to Shaun. “The person we’re talking about is Jo Grant Jones. She’s the person we know, at least here on Earth, who last had contact with the Doctor, or at least a relatively recent version of him.”

_ Does that mean she traveled with him, like Donna did? Is she friendly with him?  _ Shaun wondered how sympathetic someone might be about Donna’s plight, if they were friendly with the alien. Then again, he didn’t think Smith or Jones would try to connect him with someone who wasn’t willing to help her. 

Jones broke into his train of thought. “Jo … inherited … some technology from a — a good friend — that might get you a little closer to him. We’ll let her know you’re going to contact her by Skype.” 

She handed him a sheet of paper with Jo Grant Jones’ information typed on it. “Try tomorrow night.”

“Jones …” Shaun began, a bit diffidently. “Your — ?”

That prompted a laugh. “Not a relative, no. At least not in the regular sense. We’re sisters of a sort, though.” 

Shaun bobbed his head, unsure of how to take that, or how to thank Martha Jones or her partner, or even whether they’d done enough to be thanked for. But he took the paper.

When he got home, he heard Donna crying. He stuffed the paper back in his pocket and went upstairs. She was sitting in their bedroom in her pajamas. 

He stifled the frustration that had lately begun to creep in on the heels of his worried love. Getting angry wasn’t going to help. At least not yet, he thought unwillingly; for now, focus on being there for her. And think of the possible light at the end of the tunnel. 

“You need a hug, love?”

“Wouldn’t hurt,” she sniffed. 

That was positive, he thought, at least better than the afternoons when she just lay in bed and turned her face to the wall without speaking to him. He sat down next to her on the bedroom loveseat and put his arms around her.

“Anything else I can do?”

She twisted a little bit so that she could look at him directly. 

“Here … your nose is running,” Shaun said. “Take my hankie.”

That prompted something like a grin, or at least something with a passing acquaintance to one. “Oh, I’m sure I’m a glorious sight.” She took the handkerchief and cleaned her face up a bit. “How was your meeting?”

Shaun recognized deflection when he heard it, but he acquiesced momentarily. “It went well. We’ve got another meeting planned with an associate in Brazil, but that’ll be by Skype.”

“Brazil?”

Shaun didn’t know if pre-memory block Donna had ever known about Jo Grant Jones, so he didn’t mention her name. “A new project. I don’t know much about it now. I’m sure the Skype session will help.”

He decided to push a little. “You want to go out for dinner?”

Donna tensed up.

“Just for a curry. Or down the pub, at Albert’s,” he qualified. He knew Donna loved the Indian place that wasn’t too far from their old neighborhood. And pubs were usually safe places for her; a lot of people, but none of them paying much attention to her. 

After a long minute where Shaun wasn’t certain she was going to answer at all, Donna said, “Let me think about it. It’s been a tough day.”

That was the kind of opening he hadn’t had in weeks, and he took it. “Yeah, looks like it has been. What’s up, love?”

There was another long minute.

“Dreams again. The dream where he’s coming to get me, and I die.” Her voice was flat. 

Shaun’s heart almost stopped. “Who?”

The nightmare when the Master altered human DNA to brief but horrible effect was a blur in almost everyone’s memories, largely because their conscious brains had been short-circuited by whatever technology he’d used. But Sylvia said the Doctor told them Donna had been affected differently. She’d stayed herself, but had almost remembered her past with him; a failsafe he’d apparently placed in her brain was the only thing that had saved her from dying. Was she now remembering the Master? 

Shaun held his breath. 

“I don’t know. I’ve never seen him before,” Donna said. She sounded unsure. “In this dream — I’ve been getting it more and more — whoever he is, he’s thin … no, outright skinny, with some kind of stupid coat that flaps around his knees. His hair … it’s a mess, like century old bed head — dunno why I can remember that, but it’s like I always get irritated at the hair. 

“I can never see his face, it’s always in shadow … but he’s walking toward me. He’s trying to talk to me, and I’m telling him to sod off … he just keeps talking and talking and talking —” 

She stopped momentarily, as her voice threatened to hiccup once more into tears. Once she got herself under control, she continued. “The ending’s always the same. Just before I wake up, I can hear him say something—” She stopped, shaking her head. “Oh, God …”

“You don’t need to say anything more,” Shaun said, hugging her to stop her speaking. 

“No. No, I want to tell you,” Donna said firmly. She almost sounded like her old self. “You’ve been patience itself, and you deserve something better than … than an invalid head case.  _ I _ want free of this.” Her hands flew wide, dislodging her from his embrace as she gestured spasmodically around herself at the darkened room. 

“I’m so sick of it, Shaun. So sick of being this way. Crying, hiding in bed because I’m afraid to go outside, but afraid of sleeping, afraid of my own bloody dreams. When did this … this … whatever it is, when did it start? Oh, god, when did I end up like this? I don’t know what I’m afraid of, and that —  _ that —  _ that’s what bloody freezes me in place.”

Donna jumped from the loveseat, going to the window and yanking the curtains apart. She waved at the scene outside. “What if what I’m afraid of is around the next corner? What if it’s down the street, in the pub, waiting for me? And how can I even tell, if I don’t know what I’m looking for? A person? A thing?”

Before he could get a word in, she continued, clutching at her head. “And this headache! I can’t get rid of it, nothing they’ve prescribed works anymore, and it’s just getting worse, and I’m afraid that my head’s going to explode —”

She was shaking now, and the words were tumbling out faster and faster. Shaun was terrified. He did the one thing he could. “I’m here, Donna. I’m here, love. I always will be, no matter what. I promise. Here, shhh … shhhh … let me get your pills. I know they don’t get rid of it, but they help, right? Okay, just sit. They’re on the bedside table, right?”

She nodded and sat back down on the loveseat, quiet and obedient, the flash of her old self gone as if it had never been. Shaun’s heart ached at the loss, but he was grateful that he’d somehow interrupted her fear and shaking, at least for the moment.

Once she’d swallowed two of her pain pills, he took the water glass from her. “Do you want to lie down again?”

“No. No. Let me dress and come downstairs at least. Albert’s is right out, but maybe we could phone the Taj for some takeaway? Have them deliver it?” She looked at him hopefully. 

That was a victory, Shaun thought. Takeaway was a victory. What she’d said, what she’d told him, that was a victory, too. He couldn’t remember when she’d voluntarily said so much about what had been going on in her head over the past year. 

Then he wondered if she was willing to talk about her fear because the walls around her memory were crumbling even faster than he and Sylvia already feared. Not so much of a victory, then. 

He hoped his call with the Grant Jones woman got him closer to an answer.

_ To be continued. _


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shaun meets Jo Grant Jones, and finds himself one step closer to the Doctor. Proximity doesn't mean success, however.

“Oh, Shaun, I’m so glad you called me!”

Jo Grant Jones’ voice was sweet and sandy, a perfect match for the smile that shone through their fragile Skype connection. She kept brushing the fringe from her eyes, an action that made her look younger than her years; then again, Shaun doubted the woman gave a toss about how she appeared to anyone. 

“I … erhm … thank you,” he said. He wondered what Martha Jones might have told her that he rated such an enthusiastic greeting from a woman he didn’t know. 

“Martha called to tell me about your situation. Well, Donna’s situation, but I know it’s yours, too, because you love her. Martha said that’s obvious, and I can tell right through the screen that you’re a good man who loves deeply. Your mum and dad must be so proud.”

Shaun fought a sense of warm hypnosis as he listened to Jo. He couldn’t decide whether she was, perhaps, as alien as her one-time offworld friend, or whether she might have been this way even if she’d never met the Doctor. “I think my mum and dad would want me to help Donna,” he said, stubbornly sticking to the matter at hand.

Jo immediately lost her smile. “I”m so sorry … stupid me, going off on a tangent again. OK, time to get serious. After Martha filled me in, Mr. Smith and I did some checking. The Doctor’s been busy in England, as per usual, but he’s gone through a couple of changes, as far as we can tell.”

“Mr. Smith?” Did the Smith and Jones operation include a blood relative somewhere in the Mato Grosso?

“Our friendly neighborhood AI, who’s actually I and not A,” she said, “courtesy of an old friend who no longer needs him.” Her smile slipped a trifle. “Mr. Smith has connections both here on Earth and to off-world grids. He’s ever so much better than UNIT at tracking things in outer space, like the Doctor, although Kate’s been busy upgrading their systems.

“Anyhow, Mr. Smith tells me that the Doctor that I last met with that old friend … is no more.”

_ Bloody hell. All this, and he’s dead? _Shaun slumped in his desk chair. 

Jo’s smile returned, but with a hint of concern, “You do know about regenerations, right?”

_ Oh. Right. _After a moment of confusion, Shaun nodded and straightened up. He’d forgotten. This was that weird bit that Sylvia didn’t know, and which Shaun had only picked up via some Doctor-stanning websites. The man supposedly changed shape or something like that, every so often. As if everything else wasn’t overwhelmingly weird.

“I … yeah, I’d forgot.” He knew he sounded completely addled, but at this point he didn’t care. Jo apparently didn’t either, as she went blythely on.

“Here’s what we know, thanks to Mr. Smith — with a little help from Kate Stewart, since the last Doctor was very involved with some UNIT events a couple of years ago. And Coal Hill School, come to think of it, which seemed to be involved with UNIT as well ….” 

Jo trailed off for a second, then picked up again. “The good thing about that most recent Doctor was that he stopped by Earth fairly often, and he actually taught for a few years — his years, not ours, but Kate says the record shows him quite clearly in the lecture hall — and her people were able to put a new tracer on him during that time. Just because Mr. Smith is farther out there, so to speak, it doesn’t mean UNIT’s given up on keeping track of our alien friend. Good old Kate!” She sounded very approving.

“We’re pretty sure he didn’t find it, or didn’t bother to throw it away if he did, because it’s been tracked across, oh, I don’t know how many planets and galaxies, so there we go. And here’s the good news; he’s back on Earth now!”

“Really?” He hoped it didn’t sound too gormlessly hopeful, but he couldn’t resist Jo’s air of gleeful triumph, even if he’d only understood about half of what she’d said. 

Her smile grew positively beatific. “Absolutely! And I’m pretty sure we can get him to talk to—”

“Not Donna.” 

She shook her head. “Not Donna, no. That’s too dangerous, I should think, even if he looks different to the one she shouldn’t remember. But this one … I think we can convince him to talk to you.”

There was the crux of the matter, Shaun thought. Did Jo understand that? Had Smith or Jones told her everything? 

“I guess … that’s it, isn’t it, that’s the thing. Back when everything happened, he said he couldn’t do anything but block her memory. Donna’s mum told me he said that was the only thing he could do. 

“And then he left.” He couldn’t keep the bitterness from his voice.

“And he never should have left without doing something more for Donna. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it.” Jo wasn’t asking a question.

Shaun felt the snap inside him, as if someone had taken the lock off a shed door, and let out a bloody-mouthed dog that wanted to howl at everything around it, tear at everything and at itself. Everything that he’d stifled since hearing about the Doctor boiled up in a poisonous tide. The rage caught in his throat, and he could only nod. 

“But you know, he’s … hmm.” She stopped for a moment, then continued. “Have you read any C.S. Lewis?”

“He’s the Narnia guy,” Shaun said, trying to deal with the intellectual whiplash caused by Jo’s conversational u-turn

“Right,” she said. Her voice was so gentle that Shaun felt the raging dog inside him settle just a bit. “I don’t much hold with him, as marvelous as his creations are. Too much religiosity for me, way too much sexism and some unpleasant racism. But he said one thing about Aslan that always stuck with me. Some character’s trying to understand what Aslan has done somewhere or other. Something that seems cold, or cruel. And another character tells her, ‘He’s not a tame lion.’”

The inference was obvious. 

“It’s still —” he began, but Jo interrupted him.

“It’s not fair. It’s awful to have to live through the way he thinks, when he’s being his most alien. I know. I’ve dealt with him, and with an old version of the Master, and then another version of the Doctor, so I’m pretty much a specialist on the emotional toll we Earth types suffer thanks to Gallifrey. Not to mention that each time I’ve run into the Doctor, he’s seemed older and stranger. And not necessarily kind, not at all. 

“But he is good,” she said firmly. “That’s different, and it’s the important thing.

“And I will make him listen. I promise.” There was just a hint of iron in her voice. Then she stopped. “It may take a bit of time, though.”

“That’s fine. I mean, it’s fine if it’s not too long. Donna’s in rough shape,” Shaun said. He kept his voice steady and realized that he sounded as he did when he was trying to calm Donna. Now he was trying to calm himself, he thought distractedly. What Jo said about the Doctor both made sense and frightened him even more.

“I’m talking perhaps a week. Do you think she’s … well, is she well enough to last that long?” Jo looked ever more worried.

Shaun considered the question. Donna’s deterioration had been slow at first, but it had accelerated over the last two months. Still, seven days couldn’t be more of a wait than all the days and weeks before, when he’d had no hope at all. “I think so. If we have to wait, we have to wait.”

Then he thought about how he must sound. “I’m grateful; I really am.”

Jo looked sad again. “No, dear, you don’t need to be grateful until there’s something to be grateful about. Let’s get hold of the Doctor first.”

*** *** *** 

When Shaun got Jo’s email eight days later, he knew something was wrong. 

“Call me.” 

He fired up Skype not caring what the time was in Brazil. “What’s up?”

From the look of her, Jo had been up all night, fatigue draining her face of color. It was pinched and white, its curves rendered into hard planes by something worse than weariness. 

“I’ve got news, but … oh, I’m so sorry Shaun.”

It settled in on him then, the stone in his stomach and the crushing weight on him that had grown with every day of Donna’s agony. “You couldn’t find him.”

“No, I did find him,” Jo said. “And he said … “ She stopped, then spoke again. “He said he couldn’t—”

“You don’t need to finish,” Shaun said quickly. “You don’t.”

Jo shook her head, and he realized that she was angry. He hadn’t seen her angry before. “He was … I’ve seen him arrogant. My Doctor was arrogant, I learned how to deal with it. And arrogant didn’t mean he didn’t care, my Doctor. The other one I met was a little bit cruel, I think, but he had a heart underneath. 

“This one doesn’t seem to have one. He told me,” she said, her voice rising just a little bit, her fury incredulous, “that he didn’t have a duty of care.”

Shaun wanted nothing more than to shut down Skype, go out into the night and cry where no one could see. It was only the manners his mam had beaten into him that kept him online and speaking. “Well, thank you for trying. You didn’t have to do it.”

“Of course I did!” Jo looked at him with disbelief. “And I went round and round with him. Didn’t help.” She looked close to tears herself.

“Well, you said he wasn’t a tame lion.” To his horror, he started laughing.

“Oh, Shaun.” Now she _ was _ crying. 

Shaun, on the other hand, became afraid he might not be able to stop laughing. He turned away from the screen, and pinched the skin under his eyes. It was the painful way he kept himself awake during long nights at work, and tonight, it helped him keep the laughter from spiraling into full hysteria. He turned back. 

“I’m sorry about that,” he said. “It’s been a bit of a roller coaster —”

“— and the car just went off the rails,” Jo finished up for him as she wiped her eyes with a large and very unladylike handkerchief. “He hung up on me, so I feel as if I got tossed from the car as well.” Her gaze abruptly turned speculative. “Hrrm ….”

“What?” He hated how sharp his voice sounded. _ I’m sounding like Donna used to, before all this mess. Guess someone in the family has to keep up with Noble tradition. Other than Sylvia. _ He ruthlessly bit the inside of his cheek to keep from laughing again. 

“He didn’t hang up on me immediately, now that I think of it. He let me have a go at him. At one point, I thought I was actually making inroads — didn’t, of course, but still — he didn’t hang up immediately.”

Shaun leaned into the computer, putting his face very near the screen. “What does that even mean?” Then he pulled himself back, ashamed that the edge was still there in his words. 

Jo didn’t appear to mind his snappishness; he wasn’t sure if she was deliberately ignoring it because of her own sweet nature, or completely oblivious, also owing to her own sweet nature. “I’m not quite sure myself, Shaun, but I can tell you, I feel a lot better now than I did at the start of our call.

“Call it instinct, or maybe my being completely daft — wouldn’t be the first time, as my friends can tell you — but I still think we have a chance. I’d say I’m sorry that I asked you to call me, but I can’t, because I’m not sure I’d have reached this conclusion without our conversation. 

“So let’s cross our fingers, shall we? Even wild lions can be kind if they’ve good hearts, don’t you think?” Jo was actually bouncing in her chair as she said that, something that should have made her look ridiculous but didn’t. 

Still, Shaun didn’t think he could take much more of their topsy-turvy conversation. He nodded wordlessly.

“Alright then. You go on with taking care of Donna, and I’ll keep whacking away at the Doctor.” Jo’s smile altered; Shaun was abruptly reminded of his Pap, who was sweet and nurturing and completely unbending when it came to expecting the most from his sons. It made him feel better. He smiled back at her as they broke the connection.

Shaun looked around. It wasn’t yet 7 a.m. — it really had been the wee small hours for Jo — and he was as wrung out as if he’d survived a marathon deadline day at work. He stood up and went to the door of his home office. To his surprise, he heard Donna moving about in the kitchen, and smelled coffee brewing.

He tried not to take the steps two at a time.

“Morning.” He kept the question out of his greeting with an effort.

She was up. She’d made coffee. She looked like death warmed over but she was up. Shaun didn’t stop to think; he walked around the kitchen island and enfolded her. She responded in kind, her arms tightening around him so hard he gasped a little. She relaxed her hold the tiniest bit.

“Morning, yeah. Woke up, heard you talking, couldn’t get back to sleep, so coffee was the only thing to do,” she said, tilting her head up the bare inch he had on her. To Shaun’s delight, he heard wan amusement warring with the exhaustion in her voice. “Don’t know whether it’s going to do me any good, though.”

“Well, it’ll do me loads of good,” Shaun said. “Thanks, love.”

“You’re welcome — but taste it first. You know me and coffee; we have a fraught relationship.” 

As she said that, Donna winced, her hand flying to her forehead. “Bugger.”

“You want me to get your pills?”

She nodded, her eyes closed. “Maybe if I catch this one early enough … I shouldn’t have thought too much about coffee. It always does this.”

“Sit down, then. I’ll be right back.” Shaun took the stairs as quickly as he had coming down to the kitchen, with the usual repressed panic shouldering its way past everything else. Based on what Sylvia had told him, he knew that Donna’s previous boyfriend, a complete rotter named Lance Bennett, had tried to poison her as part of yet another unbelievable alien invasion effort foiled by the Doctor. Bennett had apparently administered the stuff in Donna’s coffee.

The walls were coming down. 

_ Jo, if you were ever capable of doing miracles, do one now._

_To be concluded_


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Shaun learns that the solution to Donna's miserable and painful year may be at hand.

“This woman’s living in some South American jungle? How on earth could you expect her to do anything for Donna? Some Brazilian eco-whackjob,” Sylvia snorted as she bustled from the counter to the kitchen table, their teas in hand.

“She’s English, and she isn’t a whackjob,” he retorted, softening the snap with a smile of thanks for his mug. “She’s a little odd, but she  _ was _ able to contact the Doctor. And she’s —”

“Successful? From what you said, she wasn’t successful at all!” She sat down at the table and busied herself with adding cream to her mug. 

Shaun saw the way her lips were trembling, and he very gently took her free hand. She flinched away, but she steadied imperceptibly. “If that ma— that …  _ alien _ , says he’s not going to help us, I can’t imagine anything in this world — in this whole universe — that’s going to change his mind.”

Sylvia rarely sounded vulnerable. Her daughter’s almost pathological need to Not Do Vulnerable had its elder mirror in her mother. But Sylvia’s face as she spoke was about as defenseless as Shaun had ever seen it, and he wished he could give her a hug. He couldn’t, of course.

“You’re know more about this guy than I do,” he allowed. “And I don’t blame you for feeling like you do, yeah? But I can’t help believing in Jo.”

He was surprised at how firm he sounded. Then again, when the strongest person in the family firm was falling apart, and the senior partner was almost as bad, he supposed the junior partner had to step up. He’d been getting used to that uncomfortable reality over the past year. He didn’t like it — he much preferred being in the background — but he did it, trying as he did to remember every bit of advice Mam and Pap had bestowed on him.

But what was resolve doing for him or for Donna now, the slightly demonic voice in his head whispered. What good was trusting Jo, even with all her optimism, if she couldn’t draw the Doctor’s help? She was only human, after all ….

_ Damned if I’ll stop believing.  _

The newly active angry dog in his head snarled, and the fear and disbelief faded. Shaun wondered if anger could sometimes be a superpower. He gripped the handle of his mug so hard that his fingers ached. 

“She’s supposed to call me sometime in the next week,” he said, catching Sylvia’s eye and holding it determinedly. “I know she will.”

Sylvia said nothing for a moment. 

“You’ll call me when you hear from her.” She made it into a command, and Shaun was just fine with that. Choosing your allies meant choosing their shortcomings as well. 

“Absolutely.” He looked at the kitchen clock. “Oh hell, it’s that late. I’ve got to go, Sylvia.” 

His mother-in-law nodded. Twilight was threatening to turn to dusk, and these days Donna hated to greet the dark alone. Shaun also wanted to stop by the florist and pick up a bouquet of bright flowers on the way home. Flowers always pleased her, especially if they were fragrant, and the act of presenting them to her pleased Shaun as well. 

By the time he parked in their drive, the shadows were long. He made sure to enter the house as noisily as possible, letting Donna know friendly forces were there for her. He looked down the hall from the entryway, and heard her in the kitchen again. It was funny, he thought: she used to happily call herself the world’s worst cook, directing him to handle culinary duties and staying away from that part of the house unless he called her in for clean-up — which she loved doing, as long as someone else had made the mess. Now, though, he’d become accustomed to finding her in there, sitting at the table with a cup of tea and her head buried in a cookbook. On good days, really good days, she was recently apt to be poking about the larder, looking for ingredients for simpler recipes. He always made sure to praise her surprisingly decent results.

“Hiya,” she called, and walked out to greet him with a hug. “Thanks!”

“Thanks?”

“Yeah, for chivvying Boots to get my new prescription filled.”

_ Wait, what? _

“Erm … yeah, glad to do it,” he replied, trying not to sound noticeably confused. “Doctor McPherson’s office did the right thing, then.”

Donna pulled away and frowned slightly. “No. It’s the doctor taking over his practise. He’s retired.”

“This is news to me,” Shaun said cautiously. “Look, I’m perished. Can we call for delivery, and then you can fill me in?”

“I’ve actually got a lasagne in. It’s half-done, should be ready soon. Suppose you can make do with crisps until then?” 

So today was a “Donna cooks” day. Shaun smiled and nodded, readying himself for whatever success or failure her project might entail once the lasagne was done, since she was obviously making it for him. He loved lasagne. “Crisps it is. Now tell me about this new doctor.”

They grabbed the crisps (salt and vinegar, one of Shaun’s few odd tastes) and headed for the living room. Once Donna was ensconced on the couch and Shaun had settled in at her feet, she said, “Yeah, it was the weirdest thing. I was upstairs and I heard the worst racket at the front door. I thought it was some of those asbos from down the road — you’d think we wouldn’t have any in this neighborhood, but teenage hooligans pop up everywhere, I guess — but when I got downstairs to tell them off, there was no one there. But there was this letter in the slot.

“It was dated last week, so I figure it must have gotten wedged into the slot and we just didn’t see it there.” 

Shaun hesitated a moment, and decided against voicing his disbelief. There was no way anyone could miss an envelope in their postbox slot. “So what did the letter say?”

“Well, it said that Dr. McPherson was retiring, and this shrink’s office apologized for the short notice.” Donna had finally become comfortable with accepting psychiatric and psychological help, and being able to call McPherson her shrink rather than avoiding the designation had been a big thing. “This one’s a woman, name of Johanna Schmidt. 

“So I called up the new number from the letter and someone on Dr. Schmidt’s staff answered, not Marie from Dr. McPherson’s. I’m guessing she retired too, since she’s older than Methuselah. Anyhow, the new staffer fit me in for an appointment next week, but she asked if I needed any prescription refills. Half-way through telling her what I’m on, and how it’s not helping, the girl very politely interrupted me and said that Dr. McPherson had changed the headache prescription — one of his last decisions before retiring, she said. She rattled off some long scientific name, and said she’d send it over to the chemist. 

“I told her good luck with that, ours is slower than cold tar, but she went all chirpy on me, so I didn’t argue. Figured I wouldn’t get the new pills until after I meet with Dr. Schmidt.

“When the delivery guy came over with the prescription this afternoon, I just figured you’d put a word in to hurry everything up. You’re better at convincing people to do the right thing than I am, after all.” 

Shaun didn’t want to lie, so he just nodded. She leaned over and patted him on the head. Sylvia once told him that he shouldn’t let her “demean” him by doing that. He hadn’t told her he loved it.

“So thanks, yeah?” his wife said. 

“Seriously, Shaun, I mean it. You know the old prescription was almost useless these days, right? Well this new stuff … the directions said to take my first dose immediately. After that, it’s once daily.

“And I’m pleased to report that I feel better than I have in months — I know, I know, it’s placebo, nothing works this well this fast, and I just took it at half one — but yeah, I do feel better, and I don’t care that it’s placebo.” 

Donna smiled, and Shaun’s breath caught. He’d forgotten how much he’d missed that smile. 

“The appointment’s next Tuesday. They want both of us there, so can you make sure you’ve got time off?”

Now it was his turn to smile, although he figured his wouldn’t be half as spectacular as Donna’s.  _ Thank you, Jo, or Martha Jones, or whoever, for whatever you might have done to get the mystery prescription filled.  _ “It won’t be a problem. Promise.”

A timer sounded in the kitchen, and Donna jumped up from the sofa. “Lasagne’s done. Lay the table, will you?”

“Got it.”

That night’s dinner was unexpectedly good, despite an overdose of thyme and oregano in the sauce. 

*** *** *** ***

Doctor Schmidt’s waiting room was a long way from Dr. McPherson’s, in more than just the absurdly complicated travel instructions Shaun had found in his inbox that morning. 

Plants with gorgeous blue blossoms lined the walls, and the room’s huge leaded glass windows transmuted the sunshine outdoors into rainbow arcs that shimmered across the hardwood floor and into Shaun’s and Donna’s eyes. The air smelled lightly but wonderfully of peonies. Peonies were one of Donna’s favorite flowers; despite the miserable headache and nausea she’d awakened with, she had visibly relaxed as she walked through the doors into their perfume.

The furniture was different to that in the multitudinous waiting rooms they’d endured over the past year. What doctor put rocking chairs in their waiting room? Extremely comfortable rocking chairs, Shaun admitted to himself, with blue and green cushions, striped with yellow and red. The blue sofa, with its promise of sleep-inducing comfort, was appealing; so were the regular chairs, which looked like something from his parents’ sitting room. But those rocking chairs— 

“Mrs. Temple?” The older man at the front desk sounded doubtful. “Ms Noble?”

“Temple-Noble. Glued my own last name to my husband’s,” Donna said, leveraging herself up. Her comment lacked the usual bite. "But anyone of them will get my attention.”

The man grinned at that and, to Shaun’s astonishment, winked at him. “Come on in, then. The doc’ll be ready for you presently.” He turned around and shouted in the general direction of a back hall. “Ryan!”

“Coming, Grandda— coming, Graham … Mr. O’Brien.” The young man who appeared to usher them into the back looked new to the job. And Shaun was fairly sure he’d been about to call the receptionist Granddad, instead of Graham, or Mr. O’Brien. If so, he definitely took after someone else in the family tree, Shaun thought distractedly. He tried to beat back the crazy hope burgeoning inside him, akin as it was to the eccentrically beautiful room into which they’d walked.

“How long has Doctor Schmidt been here?” A little banal conversation might go a long way to slowing his pulse. 

“Not long. We had to find just the right place,” Ryan said in a Yorkshire lilt. “I’m glad we waited, because this is absolutely the right place to be, for as long as we need to be here.”

Shaun decided not to ask what on earth that meant. He fell silent. Conversation was not going to slow his pulse, it seemed. Donna looked bemused, but said nothing. 

The actual surgery looked a little more medical than the front of the suite, but the blue and green color scheme continued thanks to two or three very verdant potted plants on shelving above a rather old-fashioned wooden desk sporting neither computer terminal nor keyboard.

And there on the wall was a rather lovely print of what Shaun realized, as crazy hope tangled with terror, was unmistakably the TARDIS. It stood, blue and luminous, on a garden path dappled with green and gold sunlight, shaded with purple shadows. 

Ryan saw him staring at the print. His eyes widened and he whipped it off the wall before Donna, who was just behind Shaun, could see it. “Sorry, mate.”

“Sorry about what?” Now that she was fully in the exam room, Donna eyed Ryan — his last name was Sinclair, or so his name tag declared — and turned on the infamous Noble glower. 

“Nothing bad, Miss —”

“Mrs., if you don’t mind.” The glower deepened.

Sinclair turned an unfazed and very friendly grin on her. “My apologies, Ma’am. ‘M sorry. ’m a bit of an idiot, or so my Gran always told me.”

The glower actually brightened into a brief grin of her own. “Huh. Not many men will admit that. I thought I was the only lucky spouse in a 50 mile radius.”

Sinclair looked alarmed. “I’m not married.”

“No? Well, with that kind of honesty, and that smile, I predict you’ll be snatched up quickly,” Donna said, before settling herself in a chair next to the desk.

The look Sinclair got from the young woman coming in with a sheaf of papers was priceless. She’d heard Donna’s prediction and appeared to be reacting accordingly. Shaun tried to turn his snort into a cough. 

“What’s this, then?” Shaun noticed that the woman sounded as if she were also a Yorkshire native.

“Nothing, Yaz,” the young man said hurriedly. “Nothing. Ehrm … could you let the doctor know they’re here? I’ve got to go out and … and help Mr. O’Brien.” 

“Mr. O’Bri— oh. Yeah, definitely.” The young woman, Yasmin Khan according to her name plate, actually rolled her eyes, but when she turned to look at Donna, Shaun saw nothing but kindness in her face. “Ms Temple-Noble, I have some paperwork for you to fill out, but you don’t have to do it right now. You and your husband can take all of this home and deal with it later. Just mail it in, or bring it in when you have your next appointment.”

Donna’s eyebrows hit her hairline. “You’re joking.”

“Not at all,” Khan replied.

“Are you sure the NHS will approve?” Donna had grown to hate the reams of paperwork that all her specialists inflicted on her, and Shaun felt exactly the same. She accepted the papers.

“Mr. Temple? I do have some questions about some of the records that Dr. McPherson transmitted to us. The doctor will be with your wife in a minute, and we need about five minutes of your time.” She turned to Donna. “D’you mind if we ask your husband to check on that, or would you rather we let you do it after the appointment’s over?”

Donna shook her head. “No. I trust Shaun.” 

“Alright. Mr. Temple?”

He nodded at Donna, trying to get across to her in that movement just how much he loved her, how much he valued her trust. “I’ll be right back, love.”

Out in the hall, Khan ushered him away from both the exam room and the front office. “The Doctor needs to talk to you before she goes in to talk to Donna.” 

Shaun first registered the capital D in the way Khan referred to the doctor. Then he registered something else.

“She?”

Yasmin Khan looked at him, her head canted slightly to one side. She obviously knew that Shaun with familiar with what a Time Lord was.

“The Doctor’s an alien. And 2,000-plus years old. Yeah, the Doctor can be a woman when she wants to be. And she wants to be.” She didn’t sound upset, just explanatory. 

_ Of course. Don’t assume anything.  _ “You’re right. My apologies.” But he kept it to that. He refused to feel like an idiot or sound like one. 

Khan smiled. “Not a problem. The whole thing takes a bit to get used to. Did for me, anyhow.”

“You’ve traveled with her?” 

She nodded. “Yeah, but let’s not talk outside the surgery. Don’t want your wife to hear anything.”

Shaun took a huge breath. “Right. Lead on, then.”

Khan led him further down the hall to a blue door, and opened it. “Here you go.”

She retreated and Shaun walked through the door.

_ This is happening. This is really happening.  _

She sat in a chair that seemed too big for her, one leg pulled up underneath her and the other giving a better view of her teal blue pedal pushers. Her shirt, with its bright rainbow stripe, was hardly less remarkable than the yellow braces that kept the pedal pushers up. The entire ridiculous look was anchored by brown boots covering teal socks. 

The clothes, though, paled into insignificance once he saw her face and looked into the brown eyes in her heart-shaped face.

_ Oh. Oh. She’s good. _

Later, Shaun would struggle to explain how he knew that so immediately. But he knew it as surely as he knew his own name. The Doctor was old — once you looked into her eyes, you could feel the weight of years that she labored under, he thought — but she accepted the weight with an energy that was unnervingly youthful. 

That implausible chemistry suggested both wisdom hard wrested from experience and constantly reborn optimism. Years later, when he and Donna were able to talk about his first meeting with the Doctor, Donna suggested something Shaun agreed with; that the Timelord’s essence was that of a phoenix, rising improbably from her own ashes. 

“You’re Shaun, Donna’s husband,” the Doctor said, unfolding herself to rise from the chair. “I’m really pleased to meet you.”

Before Shaun had time to fully register yet another Yorkshire accent, she closed the room-sized gap between them and hugged him. “I’m sorrier than you’ll ever know that I didn’t come before now.”

For a moment he gave himself to the embrace, because he wanted to get close to something that old and wise. But he found the angry dog inside him stirring once more. He pulled away in order to look her in the eye again. “Why not?”

Her lips thinned in a rueful  _ moue _ . “I couldn’t. Not the me’s that used to be.” She stopped and stood back from him, her look measuring. “You know about regeneration, right? That’s what Jo told me.”

He nodded. He might still be a little shaky on it, but he had a much better handle on the general idea than he once had. 

She smiled in relief. “OK then, that’s fine, that’s good. It’s hard to deal with, though, isn’t it? You being human and all. That’s what you lot all tell me.” To Shaun’s bemused surprise, she now sounded slightly bewildered, as if perplexed by the human race. 

“But that’s the case, Shaun. Y’don’t have to believe me, but it’s true. The me who left Donna half-protected did what he could do, but he was … might as well say it … he was cowardly, but that’s how he had to be. 

“Let’s sit down, eh?” She collapsed back into her chair and waved at the cushion bedecked chair placed opposite it. “This won’t take long, at least I don’t think so, but standing while talking’s not always conducive to good communication.”

He couldn’t disagree, and sat down carefully, never taking his eyes off her. 

“I’m grateful to Jo for keeping at me, you know. I had a couple of conversations with Mr. Smith once I noticed he was hailing me, so I knew she wasn’t going to give up. I never did find the tracker UNIT put on me; probably didn’t try all that hard. But Mr. Smith and that tracker helped Jo follow me through my last life.” The Doctor looked amused for a moment, then sad. 

“Was that the … erhm … the one —”

“— who told Jo I didn’t have a duty of care, yeah, that’s the one,” she agreed. Now she was shamefaced. “Worst of it was that I already knew I had a duty of care to … to everybody I’d hurt. I just didn’t want to admit it. It hurts, hurting people, once you admit it.”

He blinked. That made sense to him, and as he realized it, he felt something inside him shift. 

She continued. “But Jo kept at me, across space and time, bless. At first it was just her saying, ‘No, I just want to talk about us, about the old times.’ I let her tell me that, let her convince me, because we really had some wonderful adventures. I really must keep up with her, and you should too, come to think of it. 

“Anyhow, mustn’t get sidetracked. After that, then, she’d slide information into our convos about Martha and Mickey, ‘cos they were two other old friends I’d let down when I was shaped like I was when I ran from Donna. And I let her do that because … well, it’s pretty obvious, I suppose. I must have known, somewhere inside of me, where the whole thing was going.” 

She laughed very softly. 

“And then … and then I changed again. Surprised Jo, I can tell you! But she hung on. And this time —  _ this _ time — I was ready. I’d got over the hurt enough to admit my duty.

“And so here we are, Shaun. And I’m going to try to fix what I should have tried to fix a long time ago.” 

All the laughter left her voice, and she looked as stern as any school marm. “I’m not promising anything, because the truth is, this is one amazing giant of a job for me to tackle.

“I have no one to blame but myself for that. I didn’t take her meta-crisis mind from her, you see. That’s the tough part. It’s all there behind those eroding memory blocks. I have to shore up the blocks temporarily, while still leaving room for me to get into her mind —”

“What?” Shaun was alarmed.

“Not to find any secrets, don’t worry about that,” the Doctor said with a dismissive wave of her hand. “No, I’ll need to slip in and take a real look at what the meta-crisis mind’s software has been doing to her hardware. And if I’m very lucky, that will tell me whether her memories can be teased apart from the meta-crisis structure.

“If that’s the case, I can bleed off some of the … hmmm … let’s call it pressure, pressure on a human brain because of it having a different species’ mental structure jammed onto it. Once the pressure’s off, I can determine what to leave in place and what to erase. And I’m going to work very hard on giving her back her memories. 

“That’s half the problem, probably more than half,” she said, warming to her explanation. “Because truthfully, I’m betting that the cause of this isn’t really the memory blocks eroding all on their own. It’s Donna’s own subconscious determination that her mind is her own, and she bloody well wants those blocks out of there!” There was the goofy grin she’d flashed moments before. 

Shaun grinned in response, because that sounded just like his girl, and because what the Doctor said put his and Donna’s whole miserable year into an understandable context, slapped the last puzzle piece into its proper place. Of  _ course _ Donna would react that way, without even knowing she was doing it — 

He sucked in a breath and realized that blood was pounding in his ears. Relief could be just as uncomfortable as tension, he supposed.

The Doctor spoke again. “So yes, I think I know what I can do, but it’s going to take a while. And once I have the map to do it with, I can help Donna get rid of those memory blocks. 

“In the meantime, I’m not going to let her suffer the nightmares and headaches anymore. I promise.”

He knew she meant it when she talked about taking on the challenge, just as he knew she’d find a way to keep that last promise at the very least. 

The stone that had weighed down his stomach for so long evaporated. He took another deep breath, unreservedly grateful to the alien sitting in front of him. The angry dog in his soul retreated. He didn’t know for how long it would disappear, but he was happier than he’d been in weeks. Months, really; more like a year since Donna’s mind had started trying to free itself from the Doctor’s poorly jury-rigged barricades — 

_ Donna.  _

He stood up. “Is it time?”

She nodded. 

“Yep, it’s time for me to meet her again, for the first time. And I know enough regenerations have passed, and I’m different enough, that not even her subconscious will recognise me, not for a good long while.

“And by the time she does, it won’t kill her.” The Doctor nodded as if pleased that she herself could agree with the sentence. Then she twirled around and grabbed the lab coat hanging on the back of her chair. “Wouldn’t do to look unprofessional, would it?”

They walked together down to the surgery.

“Donna, this is Doctor Schmidt,” he said, crossing to his wife and grabbing her hand perhaps a little harder than was completely necessary. She smiled up at him and pressed back just as hard, then turned to see the Doctor.

And the Doctor smiled.

“Hello, Donna I’m so very glad to meet you.”

-30-


End file.
